July 30, 2009
Western Washington University has been named to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership Top 20 Colleges and Universities purchasing green power in the nation for 2009.
Western ranked eighth nationally, purchasing 40,000 kilowatt hours – 100 percent of its electrical energy – from green sources, which in the case of Western is the Endeavor Wind Farm in Iowa.
Western was the only university in the State of Washington on the list, and in the Pacific Northwest, only Oregon State University purchases more kilowatt hours of renewable energy than WWU.
Together, the Top 20 College and University Partners are purchasing 867 million kilowatt hours of green power each year, which is equivalent to the electricity used to power more than 86,000 homes annually.
The Green Power Partnership is a voluntary EPA program that seeks to increase the use of green power among leading U.S. organizations. The Green Power Partnership currently has more than 600 partners, including Fortune 500 companies, states, federal agencies, trade associations, and universities. Green power is defined by the partnership as electricity products that are partially or entirely generated from environmentally preferable resources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, and low-impact biomass and hydro resources.
For more information on EPA’s Top 20 college and university Partners list, visit http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/toplists/top20ed.htm. For a full listing of the more than 600 EPA Green Power Partners and information about buying green power, see the Partnership’s Web site at http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/.
The genesis for Western’s renewable energy program began more than five years ago when a small group of Western students set a goal of having Western obtain all of its electrical energy from a 100-percent renewable source. To meet that goal they proposed a student initiative to implement a fee that would offset the cost of purchasing renewable energy.
As a result of their efforts and significant research into renewable energy, Western moved to the forefront of the renewable energy field, becoming the first university in the country to implement a student fee for the purchase of green energy.
The student initiative passed in a spring 2004 election with 84.7 percent approval. The WWU board of trustees approved the student fee, which went into effect in 2005 and which allows the university to offset all of its electricity use with purchases from renewable energy sources.